The article referenced a 1975 Businessweek article titled The Office of the Future that addressed what was at the time new technology associated with word processing and other electronic innovations. They would, according to the author, replace all true need for paper in the office in about a decade. Nearly 40 years later, that is still not the case. Organizations have found they usually have multiple places in their workflow where analog meets digital. Technology hasn’t been able to replace some of the most important information still being recorded on paper.

 

Although a lot of our tools and systems are digital, many of the touchpoints businesses have with their customers remain analog. In these places, paper will remain the most practical choice for capturing information. In some situations it is the only acceptable choice—paper does not break, run out of batteries, risk security breaches, or need upgrading.

 

Digital electronic systems also are not designed for all types of users. A recent survey of health insurance enrollees demonstrated that a web-only self-service experience was not sufficient to decide which type of plan they need. Systems meant for everyone must be designed for everyone, not just people with IPads or relatively new computers with high-speed internet access. The goal should be to meet customers where they are, not ask them to change behavior that has been ingrained and trusted for decades. 

 

As noted in the article, paperless is not always a smart goal when an organization sees that evolution, not revolution, is the sensible path forward. When it comes to paper, there has not been a reasonable evolutionary path made available. The choice has felt black or white—paper or no paper. To enable a gentle, evolutionary path forward, many smart IT decision makers employ the continued use of paper with their new technologies. 

 

Throwing out an organization’s entire paper processing capability is known to result in a high rate of failure, the article points out. The U.S. Veterans Administration created the electronic Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS) to replace its use of paper. When the system fails, which is regularly, patients turn back to paper and the legacy processes become burdened more than ever. Systems that incorporate both paper and digital workflows, and integrate the resulting data in one backend store, can greatly increase both organization efficiency and customer satisfaction. Rip and replace systems, like the VBMS, often force too much change too quickly throughout an entire organization.

 

The paperless mindset often overlooks a critical fact—vast stores of valuable information are housed on paper. When we think of big data as only including the information we can easily access—like web logs and click streams—we are missing a huge opportunity. Both commercial and public sector organizations need solutions that help them analyze paper-based data with big data tools. This view embraces data in all of its forms.

The idea of "paper vs. paperless" is a false dichotomy, the article emphasizes. Data comes in both forms, and we need to think more about how to get the data we need rather than the form it comes in. As the digital and analog worlds increasingly meld together, we need to center our thinking around "going paperless" as a means to using digital data, not an end.